Day 15

Winter is a season of waiting and longing for what isn't yet to be.

 But it will be. That is a comfort at least.

Today is the first day of the lunar year. The year of the horse.
A year of energy and luck. 

A year to launch new things, and maybe old things too.
 But we must wait for thaw to come, for the moon and sun and stars to align with the mind of the universe and let us go. 

What are we doing now that will prepare us for that moment? For it will come. Our habits, our energy, our awareness, our presence should all be aligned towards that moment.

Day 14

Some bunny was having fun. The wind this evening almost felt , dare I say, balmy? 

 I relaxed a bit in the wind rather than walking briskly against its sharpness.

Footprints in the snow seemed melted at the edges. 

The snow didn't crunch but mushed about underfoot.

Relative to what we've had lately, it felt like a party outside.

 I bought some licorice. 

I played fetch with Ruby and a stick. I chatted with a neighbour.

 I saw a few people out and about - some joggers, a kid with headphones singing to himself. I heard voices coming up the stairs when I was walking across the bridge. 

 felt like change in the air. 

The wind is rising now as I type. A warm wind with soft snow. I popped my head out to check.

a party out there i tell you!

Day 13

 I admire graffiti  - the sculpted letters, the blaze of colour where it's not supposed to be. I took a photo here this summer when I discovered this path on one of my summer night walks. I took another today, and after I pocketed my phone I walked by dirt and salt crusted scarves and blankets, and a human-sized gap in the fence that anyone could pass through. You could pick your way down the ravine and go to the river. 

I think anyone who used this space headed for the warmth of the shelters in the city long ago. In the spring they'll be back with their sleeping bags, going down to the river, watching graffiti artists decorate, building bonfires and sitting on discarded lawn furniture, observing middle class women taking pictures of their space. 

Wouldn't it be odd if they took a pic right back at me? Middle class woman walking in her down parka loaded down with shopping bags from the mall pulling out her cellphone and taking a pic of what amuses her...there should be a gallery for photos like that. It feels uncomfortable to be the observed. 

We feel far more comfortable, far more used to doing the observing. 

Day 12

Lit clouds above our house. 

 I walked at sunset to avoid a frigid late-night walk. It wasn't any warmer.

But have you noticed sunset is getting later everyday?

It feels like the-eternal-winter-that-has-no-end,
but now we know that
Spring
hasn't
abandoned us!
Cold comfort, I know.

Day 11

No one was outside. I was truly walking solo. Not even a car on the road. I was walking in the middle as you can see. Minus 30 with the windchill they said. glad for the scarf up to my nose. Walkin' in the Middle of the Road, Ya ah! (Chrissy  - Thre Pretenders - Chain Gang) It wasn't as exciting as that I tell ye. 

Walked past Less than Level bar on Kerr.St - a few guys outside for a smoke.

Who goes to bars on a Monday night? I'd love to hear their backstory.
 Or maybe not. 

I'm full up with stories. Sometimes you just don't have any room left when you hear another one. 

That's precisely when you know you need the weekend - when your empathy has run dry. 

I think a 3-day weekend would help make more room - that's probably what those guys were doing at that bar tonight; they were making more room. 

Day 10

Good sunday morning sunshine. 

Minus 20 but when you turned your face to the sun you could feel its radiance on your cheeks.
Walking everyday fills me up with the simplicity of sensation. Perhaps this will dampen my enthusiasm for jalepeno chips and hyper-analysis.

I love how the puzzle-like pieces of ice roll with the harbour underneath.

We always joke about Bob's cold-defensive hunch-back posture from October to April.

After this pic he of course fake-slips on the ice and fake-falls into the lake for my viewing pleasure.

Day 9

Walking at night on a workday is the perfect ending to my day.
I start walking, open to the elements and what is around me, but thinking about the day past and letting my thoughts yammer away. But soon my monkey brain lets go and my body and soul open up to the night and all that it gives me. 

I have realized that walking at night affords me a certain kind of anonymity - a cover of darkness that I can escape into. It's my therapy.

Walking during the day is more utilitarian - walking about doing errands - and social - saying hello, stopping to chat, waving at people driving down the street.
You have to be willing to be seen and to see lots of people.
I enjoy that, especially on the weekends.
But being in front of 40 plus students during the day plus everyone else a day brings -
I need to walk solo for a bit.

Walking at night cleanses me from everything that accumulated that day.
It brings me back to body and soul, like a re-set to myself again. 

Day 8

Couldn't walk without covering my face.

 I looked up long enough to catch these delightful shadows.

Ying and Yang.

Day 7

When we do things we don't want to do, we can either shut ourselves off to the unwanted experience or we can enter it open to whatever it will bring us. 

We are free to choose either one.

Day 6

I walked my friend home from bookclub and kept walking. ho hum.
Sometimes a walk feels like this...just crunch crunch crunch. But I have to keep walking anyway.
Something will turn up...

ok - not exactly what I meant, but some days are like this. The same old grey suit.
But there is beauty in the continuity - the same man wakes up, shaves and drinks coffee and walks down the stairs and opens up shop. The same old customers and their 3-button suits.
There is a curious beauty in steadfastness.
Boredom means safety, my students tell me.
They are psyched by the levels of boredom they can achieve in Canada.
They are grateful for boredom in ways that I cannot be.
To be bored is to be alive.

Day 5

Beauty everywhere I turn.
Do you see the bits of river lit up down below?
The sky was such silent blue velvet tonight.

Day 4

 I live across from Forster Park, a sweet patch of urban forest.
On my way home from most walks I try to walk through the trees to my house.
There are a few that I lean on with my back up against the bark. Over a hundred years of life.
 I can feel them hum into my spine.

Day 3

Day 3 of my challenge. Freaking cold Sunday afternoon. I took a walk in the 'hood.
You can walk everywhere you need to. And then some.
This photo reminds me of this "then some".

Snow-hitting-your-cheeks cold.
The wind made it impossible to look up.
I was afraid I would drop my blackberry into the howl of the ravine or down into the mess of cars below when I tapped the view on my screen and put it in my pocket.

I'm probably the only one I know who uses her crackberry as a key tool in biographical documentary. My dear friend Kendra, who moved to Copenhagen, gave it to me as she opted to sync all her apples. So it's me and my crackleberry. She tells me she misses her qwerty. I miss her.

I love the bark on this row of tall trees. Almost reptilian.
The shopping cart seems displaced amongst the living things yet happy somehow.

Cappucino at Kerr st. Cafe with the Bob. I married him 2o years ago. We didn't celebrate our anniversary this year We weren't in the mood, shall we say for now. 

Day 2

Something about this abandoned house on Lakeshore always draws me in. It has a lovely side-yard with weeping willows living in a tangled sort of harmony with fruit trees that blossom in the spring. If I owned a cafe, this would be the place. 

Day 1

On January 17, 2014 I decided to take a long walk everyday for 30 days and post a photo for each day of my journey. Though I began walking, almost daily, last January, as with many things in my life, this new habit took a while to take hold.

Some days I just walked to the shed to put out the recycling, other days I trekked across town and back and there were very sad days where I walked to the car. Ahem. But I developed a fondness for my new habit. Fondness can get you out of bed in the cold, dark of winter. I liked it that much. So I began to walk  to rather than drive to the grocery store, to the movies, and downtown to the croissant shop on Sunday mornings. I began to kick the suburban habit of driving everywhere to the curb. But it wasn't daily. Until last summer.

Last summer, the summer of my discontent, I began to walk daily for sheer, desperate need. I needed to get out of my head, out of my house and into something completely different without really going anywhere. I used and abused Mad Men for this purpose but the effects of the cure were over with the closing song.

So I walked. I walked all over Oakville. I walked around all sorts of unfamiliar neighbourhoods and walkways and paths and tunnels and nooks and crannies that I only drove by before. I shed 10 pounds, the world on my shoulders and years of bitter cragginess. And something happened to me.

I walked into gratefulness. I literally walked into her. And her eyes were my eyes. I used to be grateful, so long ago it must have been another life. but I walked into her again. I discovered I could be grateful. And I was so grateful for grateful. I wasn't looking for her, but she found me. I couldn't have needed her more. And she arrived, unannounced, like all things in life that we really, deeply need. And so began my new journey.

And, as with all newborn babies, I am taking lots of pictures.